The Fielding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 1906. Educational Responsibility.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 28, 2 August 1906, Page 2

The Fielding Star. Oroua & Kiwitea Counties Gazette. THURSDAY, AUGUST 2, 1906. Educational Responsibility.

In the early days of State school in- | struction an idea had been fostered that the sole responsibility for the work of a school rested on tlie headmaster, and that the only standard to judge a school by was the examination results. If those were satisfactory, then it was concluded that the work was properly apportioned, the staff were fairly paid and the pupils were properly treated. A change in the point of view was necessitated when the system of individual examination in the lower standards by the inspectors was superceded by examination by the headmaster, with only a cursory study of the attainments of each pupil in those standards by the inspectors. Reliance being placed more upon tbe efficiency of the teachers as shown in their own examinations and at the inspection visits paid to the schools by the inspectors, coupled with the rosults in the higher standards. With that .has come the lopping away of the isolated position of the headmasters, who, instead of being beyond criticism in.jregard to the arrangement and apportionment of their staff, are now called upon to justify that portion of their work, to explain. the grounds for anomalies existing which are disapproved by the inspectors, and to recast their staff as directed by the more experienced officers employed by the Board. It is only natural that some headmasters should dislike what they naturally look upon as an attack upon the impregnable citadel they have previously occupied ; but as the concern of the parent is that the pupils should obtain the best education possible in the manner most satisfactoiy to all concerned, it is not likely that 'much objection will be taken to the removal of another relic of the unsatisfactory methods of our education system, tho only recommendation for their retention being their antiquity or their evasion of responsibility on the part of the Board.